battles against the body: reconstructing femininity in patriarchal religio- social spaces

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Battles Against the Body: Reconstructing Femininity in Patriarchal Religio-social Spaces

Ratul Ghosh1

AbstractFemininity has been a social construct; the biological attributes of female sexuality had provided mere supporting logics to those constructing authorities which could easily be identified in patriarchal sociopolitical agencies. Philosophy, on the other hand, has always been used by religion as well as governmental authorities to provide a theoretical framework for its pragmatics of dominance and discrimination. The proposed article would focus on how femininity has been persistently considered as a corporeal phenomenon in the socio-religious domain and would explore how the initiated women had to fight against their own body to fit in that discriminating and dominating social structure and religious pragmatics. In the course of this discussion, this article would also focus on politicisation of feminine corporeality in ancient as well as modern societies to exemplify the subtle dominance of patriarchy. Thus, this article would try to understand the making of female subjectivity through this inner battle in the arena of a phallocentric socio-religious narrative.

1 Govt. General Degree College (Hindi Medium), Alipurduar, West Bengal, India.

Society and Culture in South Asia2(1) 103–126

© 2016 South Asian University, New Delhi

SAGE Publicationssagepub.in/home.nav

DOI: 10.1177/2393861715609825http://scs.sagepub.com

Corresponding author:Ratul Ghosh, 20 Bansdroni Place, Sonar Tari Appt. 3rd Floor, PO. Bansdroni, Kolkata, 700070, West Bengal, India.E-mail: [email protected]

Article

<?> Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi.

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104 Society and Culture in South Asia 2(1)

KeywordsFemininity and physicality, embodiment, religion, culture

Birth of the Problematic: Feminine Religious Corporeality

In his Taẕkirat al-Aūliyā, the famous treatise on Sufi saints, Farid al-Din Attar (1145–220) considered a single woman saint to be included among the greatest Sufi saints of all time. She was Rābiʿah al-Başrī. The chapter on Rābiʿah begins with some clarifications by the author:

If anyone says, ‘Why have you included Rābiʿah in the rank of men?’ my answer is, that the Prophet himself said, ‘God does not regard your outward forms.’ …When a woman becomes a ‘man’ in the path of God, she is a man and one cannot anymore call her a woman. (Arberry 2000: 29).

Therefore, we can see that femininity has been demonstrated as a mere ‘outward form’. This structured corporeal femininity was considered unsuitable to achieve accomplishment in religious practices and faculties. Fulfilment in religious endeavours usually calls for the occurrences of virtuous metaphysical transcendence, which are reportedly considered as a characteristic path for men. Therefore, Rābiʿah had to attain ‘manhood’, she had to ‘become a man’ in the ‘path of God’ to be reckoned among extraordinary saints. We can easily understand that this ‘becoming a man’ symbolises spiritual and metaphysical upliftment. Thus, manhood has not been considered as a mere outward form. An enhancement of spiritual faculty by practising austerity, self-mortification and asceticism could transcend one’s femininity into manhood by surpassing the borders of physicality. This example exposes subtle patriarchal notions which were predominant from the developmental stage of classical Sufism. Nevertheless, we could historically trace it in much ancient societies as well as in modern egalitarian societies, both in mainstream religious doctrines and subversive alternative religious cults. This article intends to understand how femininity has been delimited as an assemblage of physical attributes, and how this idea of corporeal femininity has been ceaselessly utilised by the patriarchal religio-social agencies to subjugate and manipulate the feminine within religio-cultural as well as social spaces.

Providing examples from the Fakir–Baul cult (which is still a contemporary religious practice in rural Bengal) could substantiate our

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proposition in reference to alternative and heterodox religious practices. Bauls and Fakirs are heterogeneous groups with an amalgamated doctrinal structure encompassing ‘tantra’, ‘yoga’, ‘vaishnavism’2 and selected doctrines of Sufism. Prolonged coital union with female partners (sādhan sānginī3) is their principal sexo-yogic exercise. Regarding their religious practice, they utter the aphorism, ‘Become a woman to make union with a woman.’4 One of their proposed explanations is reportedly that, during a sexual union, man’s nature is penetrative and woman’s nature is receptive or absorbing. At a higher level of the religio-coital exercise, the adept acquires that feminine receptive power by controlled breathing and seminal retention, which generates a suction mechanism in his phallus. This is how they propose to achieve femininity, become a woman in coitus (Jha 1999(2010)). Hence, we can derive that femininity is essentially an achievable physical state according to the doctrinal understandings of the Fakir and Bauls. Moreover, a concerned parallel research could establish the fact that these female consorts are used merely as tools for religio-coital sexo-yogic practices. A female subject with full control over her genital mechanism and her body in coitus is preferred as a tool for the esoteric practice of the male practitioners. We could refer to Dr Leena Chaki in this regard, who has done an extensive fieldwork among sādhan sānginī or female Baul practitioners of Bengal and have found discourses of despair, denigration and desolation among them (Chaki 2012). She has found that women from disciple families are sometimes offered to the spiritual master as fruit, cow or other offerings are made. As the process of their esoteric coital exercise requires feminine vital fluids in a vivid range, the primary task of a male practitioner is to collect menstrual fluids from women and consume it to prepare their body for prolonged coital union (Jha 2007). A male practitioner can have as many female partners as he wishes to, and he seemingly holds the authority to judge whether the female partner has the eligibility, rather capability, to pursue the sādhanā or not. Though an apparent notion of respect and adoration towards the women is customary among the Bauls and Fakirs, we cannot ignore the fact that the feminine body has become

2 Vaishnavism is a Hindu religious tradition where the Supreme God Vişņu and his incarnation Kŗşņa (sometimes Rama as well) are worshipped. In Bengal, Vaishnavism has an orthodox creed named as ‘Gauḑiya Vaishnavism’ and another subversive heterodox creed named as ‘Sahajiyā Vaishnavism’. The Bauls have been much influenced by the later creed.3 In Bengali, sādhan/sādhanā means esoteric practice and sanginī means a female partner.4 The Bengali version is: Prakŗti hoiyā kara prakŗtir sanga. The word prakriti has a dual meaning in both Bengali and Sanskrit. Generally, prakriti means ‘nature,’ but it also means ‘women’ or ‘cosmological feminine principle’.

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a corporeal machine in this praxis of religio-coital exercise. What was in theory of the Sufi doctrine came into practice by denigrating the femininity into physicality. Before exploring certain notions of this physicalised femininity in religion and society, we would observe the historical development of this vilification in sociopolitical spaces.

Denigration of Body: Contextualising the Mind–Body Split

Now, the prevailing question is: why being considered as a bodily phenomenon confers a discriminating social position for femininity? How this interpretation could affect and denigrate the position of the women in the society? To expound this aspect, we would propose a sociopolitical understanding of the Cartesian model of soul/mind–body split. It could be considered as the first philosophical mind–body encounter of modernity, which has a sociopolitical reference of subjugation. According to Descartes, the mind or soul is a distinct entity which could exist devoid of the body. The human body is merely an organic machine, being controlled and dominated by the soul or mind which is autonomous and indestructible in nature. This proposition has been criticised from various perspectives and we would not focus upon its philosophical polemics. We rather would try to concentrate on the sociopolitical scenario of the time when this theory was emerging. We would apply a Marxian conceptual framework to understand it, as Silvia Federici did in her important work Caliban and the Witch.

One may wonder about the rationale of applying Marxian framework over Cartesian model. However, the model of Cartesian split, as we observe, experienced a sociopolitical consequence alongside the philosophical objective. The philosophical part of the model, which would further involve the idea of God, would not be leading us to depict the politicisation of philosophical ontology under the regime of the institutional power constructed ‘within specific historical practices’ (Butler 1990: 97). To understand this power structure and its modes of pervasions, we are proposing the Marxian framework which will explore the political economy under which this Cartesian model was being moulded within the subjugating mechanisms of capitalist power. We would also observe how religion, working hand by hand with the political power structure, has controlled the deployment of this philosophy in social modalities.

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In the 16th–17th century, the age of the development of capitalism in Europe, the industrial state put a rigorous effort in transforming the individuals into labour power, where church worked alongside this power regime. We have to remember that this time has historically been characterised as the ‘Age of reason’, when the occult, witchcraft, black magic and similar practices had been constantly attacked by science, logic and reason. Federici elucidates:

At the basis of magic was an animistic conception of nature that did not admit to any separation between matter and spirit, and thus imagined the cosmos as a living organism, populated by occult forces, where every element was in ‘sympathetic’ relation with the rest. (Federici 2013: 141–42)

Such perceptions suggested that human existence in this world could transcend the barriers of space, time and corporeality to achieve things without pertaining to work or causality, but with the help of supernatural forces. This idea, proposing the occurrence of irrationalised possibilities, did not deem fit for capitalist society or its work ethics. Such ethics considered ‘labour’ as a commodity which could be bought by wage, which necessitated a regularity of this laboured work process, as the industry required continuous production. Hence, Francis Bacon voiced against magic:

‘[I]n the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,’ it is now by various labours (not certainly by disputations or idle magical ceremonies, but by various labours) at length and in some measure subdued to the supplying of man with bread; that is, to the uses of human life. (McKnight 2006: 99)

As Bacon asserts that ‘magic kills industry’, Hobbes criticised ‘prophecy’ in his Behemot as ‘prophecy being many times the principal cause of events foretold’ (Federici 2013: 143). A capitalist state could not afford to suffer such uprisings initiated by its subjects at the time of Industrial Revolution, which requires a labour power that could be manipulated and controlled in a regular and mechanical manner of work schedule and that could be used up to the most optimised level of human capability (as the industries are ‘buying’ their labour as a commodity) so that the flow of production never stops. This was the time when capitalism required a sympathetic ‘mechanical philosophy’, and this was the time of Descartes. In this period, the ‘body’ of human subjects became the most important resource to capitalism as the foundation of labour. The ‘body’ seemed to serve as the only commodity in possession of the proletariat (among whom, the prostitutes were also included), as it could be waged against. Thus, the idea of ‘embodiment’, the perception of living as an organic

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machine required a scientific as well as a philosophical redefinition. Therefore, ‘body’ had to be relinquished from mind or soul; it had to be understood as a ‘great machine’. The essence of the existence of the species should be understood as independent from ‘body’, as the body is the subject of scientific rationalisation (but the understanding of the soul surpasses the limits of human scientific knowledge; therefore it falls under God’s reign and Church’s subjugation) and mechanical persuasion; hence, the power relations were applicable to the body (Foucault 1995). Federici beautifully concludes: “We can see, in other words, that the human body and not the steam engine, and not even the clock, was the first machine developed by capitalism” (Federici 2013: 146).

At this time the development of ‘anatomy’ as a medical and scientific discourse was at its full bloom. We have to understand the politics of calling the dissection chambers by the name of ‘Anatomy Theater’ that were also open for public observation. New ‘mechanical philosophy’ wanted to discover and expose every hidden mechanics of the body, wanted to understand how it performs and how its performance could be enhanced or manipulated. This ‘knowledge’ of body, as we pursue through Foucauldian framework, was applied to reinforce the power relations. That is why Descartes is not only the author of Meditations, but he is also the author of Treatise of Man (1664), which could be considered as an anatomical handbook. That is why, in mechanical philosophy, one could find descriptive analogies of the body with a machine.5 ‘Body’ has been understood as a ‘brute matter’, consisted with great multitude of bones, muscles, nerves, arteries, bones; it could not think, could not feel, could not know and could be only instructed and controlled by the will of the soul or spirit: a machine (‘automata’, according to Hobbes) created by the hands of God. This is how the denigration of body disseminated in European philosophy, and capitalist work discipline used this theory of defamation and mechanisation of the body to transform the body power into labour power/work power by separating the body from the person.

Towards a Feminist Understanding of the Mind–Body Split

It is now clear being considered as a body besmirches the whole existence of the person, making him/her more susceptible to the subjugation of

5 ‘For what is the heart, but a spring; and the Nerves, but so many Strings; and the Joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body’ in Hobbes (2009: 7).

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state. Keeping this understanding in mind, we could make a more specific focus towards feminine body. Contesting Descartes, we can find manifold arguments from feminist criticisms of scientific epistemology. They argue that the mind–body dualism determines women as emotional and physical creatures. In this regard, we can refer to the feminist critique of Cartesian ‘reason’ for its underlain masculine epistemological characteristic. The feminists interpret the ‘great Cartesian anxiety’ as the ‘anxiety over separation from the organic female universe’6 (Bordo 1987: 5). Bordo explains the Cartesian ‘flight from the feminine’ as ‘a “re-birthing” and “re-imaging” of knowledge and the world as masculine’ (Bordo 1987: 5).

Actually a more precise criticism of Cartesian ‘epistemic individualism’7 could be drawn from the relationship between social power and its implications in the epistemic faculty of a meditating individual. Catherine Mackinnon argues that the meditator who comes to comprehend that his existence is solitary and does not approve of others being existent is already at a higher position at the power structure of society. In other words, the meditator is a male. The one, who finds his position at the apex of the social hierarchy power, could epistemologically nullify the world that he observes and precepts; but someone who is always subjugated by external powers through its different social deployments could never afford to imagine her existence without relating to the external world. Catherine thinks that epistemic individualism ‘comes from the luxury of a position of power that entails the possibility of making the world as one thinks or wants to be’ (Mackinnon 1987: 58). Clearly, the proposition refers to a feminist standpoint theory to point out the bias in the epistemological method of belief formation.

However, the argument of Mackinnon, like the similar arguments from feminist critics of Cartesian doubt, proposes to refute an epistemological issue from psycho-social aspects. The counter argument could be that, according to Descartes, the meditator is not epistemologically or conceptually related with any worldly existence, though this does not deny the fact that the meditator is obviously linked with the outer world causally or psychologically. The epistemic individualism should be

6 As Descartes has put ‘nature’ against ‘reason’ and this ‘nature’ as universe is ‘feminine’; hence, the war against occult, magic and other practices, sympathetic to organic and metaphysical relation of nature with human existence, could be contextualised in a more nuanced manner. 7 Epistemic individualism is the Cartesian thesis that ‘knowing “I exist” does not entail being justified in believing that other persons exist’ (Gertler 2002: 92).

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delimited up to this perspective. Nevertheless, on the other hand we have to keep in mind that no belief-formation process is free of psycho-social interpolations. Hence, comes the question of priority in perception, as the precondition of accepting Cartesian doubt is the belief that ‘one’s own existence is epistemically prior to belief in others’ existence, while at the same time admitting that other states are psychologically prior to any belief in one’s own existence’ (Gertler 2002). However, this argument postulates a potential disjuncture between epistemic faculty and psychological faculty, which is prior to the mind–body dualism of Descartes. Moreover, this duality actually reciprocates with the basic Cartesian differentiation pointed out by the feminists: the epistemic faculty shows affinity towards masculinity and psychological faculty is linked with femininity, thus, supporting the hierarchy of the split. Furthermore, if we accept that the transfusion of social experiences of stratification is inevitable in a meditating process, we can assume that its effects are more extensive. The polemics then, in a broader spectrum, should refer to all type of social stratification including class, cast, race or ethnicity along with gender.

So, the arguments are too subtle to demonstrate any unyielding inclination in support of feminists or non-feminists. Submitting to the equivocality of the arguments, we could provide an interesting contribution to the polemics if we study Descartes’s correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia. In their correspondence, where Descartes acted like a teacher and the princess as an eager disciple, we could find that Descartes had showed an egalitarian, rather appreciative nature. However, Elisabeth came out with a very practical problem. She admitted to Descartes that she failed to find much time for practising meditations accordingly as she could not avoid her unrelenting household duties and social responsibilities as a woman (Shapiro 2007). Though Descartes replied with the most encouraging and admiring note, we do not fail to notice that it seemed difficult for a feminine subject to seek for pure cognitive knowledge within her regular socio-normative territory. Hence, it has been argued by the feminists that Descartes’ epistemic perceptions does not always transcend social conditions, rather it ignores them because of the blissful unawareness of a masculine standpoint. This claim is further bolstered by Elisabeth, when she says that her upbringing could not make her presume that she ‘could not err in believing the contrary of what people speak’ (Shapiro 2007: 67). We could find an analogy of this claim with a previous feminist debate that it would be nearly impossible for a woman to nullify her social and household associations in a meditating process while her thoughts and

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actions are constantly being observed and regulated by the patriarchal social apparatuses and agencies.

Returning back to our previous discussions, we observe that the involvement of power is the most important contribution of Descartes in the epistemic genealogy of mind/body and internal nature/external nature duality dated back to the ancient Greek philosophy. Plato located the eternal and true essence of being outside the natural world. He proposed to surpass and transcend this embodiment of mortality to ascend to the ideal state of being. To him, the body was a prison where the soul is locked and the external nature was a fractious beast, inferior and unimportant. Plumwood (1993: 109) observes that, ‘Plato does not seem to think of the natural world itself, external nature, as a field for control, something humans have power over or have to struggle with.’ It was Descartes who proposed a shift in the split by suggesting subjugation and control over the body machine. We can reasonably argue that enlightenment and capitalism had subtle incitement behind this development which was simultaneously utilised in modalities of social subjugation. Thus, the politicisation of Cartesian philosophy is important to observe.

Historically, the age of enlightenment was the time when capitalism direly needed a machine for the reproduction of labour power. The uterus reduced to be considered as a machine which could provide the industrial society its labour power by delivering human bodies. Parallelly, we would find that this was the peak time for witch hunting in Europe. On the one hand, witch hunting provided the capitalist society a chance to get rid of the rebel feminine, misfit in the patriarchal social schema framed upon dominating frameworks of hierarchy and on the other hand, witch hunting destroyed the contraceptive methods that women used to apply for controlling procreation8 (Federici 2013). This was the time when unproductive forms of sexuality were penalised and subjected to social censorship (Foucault 1998), as the society constructed of normative forms of sexuality through medical discourse and juridical implication of institutional power.

With the social development of sexuality as an apparently ‘repressive discourse’, we could observe parallel erotic developments in arts. In this context, we can refer to the emergence of rococo eroticism in painting, particularly towards the lustful depiction of feminine body in

8 ‘We also know that many witches were midwives or “wise women,” traditionally the depository of women’s reproductive knowledge and control’ (Federici 2013: 182). Gradually, with the development of anatomy and medical science, the profession of obstetrics began to be dominated by men.

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the paintings of Francois Boucher or Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Such vivid celebration of female nudity and depiction of subjective gaze of lustful men suggests that eroticism seemed suitable for public display,9 whereas sexuality was deemed condemnable in social spheres. Feminine bodies were considered as the vital invokers of sexual desires and unrestricted passions; thus, a favourite victim of the Satan. That is why, the women marked as witches were often condemned of immoral lecherous behaviour, believed to invoke satanic sexual desires in the hearts of young men and destroy them. Hence, before killing the witches, the process of killing involved rigorous use of innovative torture mechanics to apply immeasurable physical pain to the victim and devouring her body (especially her genital parts, as the Satan was believed to hide himself in such organs) to compel her confess publicly that she possessed evil in her body.10

Now, if we thoroughly examine the nature of this ‘punishment’, we detect a resemblance of the punitive measures with Foucauldian description of medieval punishments subjugating the bodies of the accused in similar patterns (Foucault 1995). However, we could not help but notice that in Foucault’s discourse, the ‘body’ which has been subjected to the state-implied disciplinary mechanisms, is essentially a masculine body. Foucauldian subject never indicates a feminine attribute, thus, limiting his theory.11 In case of feminine subject, the procedure of ‘punishment’ essentially included a parallel notion of ‘humiliation’. That is, in the hands of state-implied disciplinary punitive mechanisms,

9 A particular reference to the painting L’Escarpolette or The Swing could be made here, where a prurient lady lets a young man gander under her dress while she is sitting on a swing pushed by her butler.10 Federici briefs the ‘standard procedure’ of the brutal punishment as:[T]he accused were stripped naked and completely shaved (it was argued that the devil hid among their hair); then they were pricked with long needles all over their bodies, including their vaginas, in search for the mark with which the devil presumably branded his creatures (just as the masters in England did with their runaway slaves). Often they were raped; it was investigated whether or not they were virgins—a sign of innocence; and if they did not confess, they were submitted to even more atrocious ordeals: their limbs were torn, they were seated on iron chairs under which fires were lit; their bones were crushed. And when they were hung or burnt, care was taken so that the lesson to be drawn from their end would not go unheeded. The execution was an important public event, which all the members of the community had to attend, including the children of the witches, especially their daughters who, in some cases, would be whipped in front of the stake on which they could see their mother burning alive. (Federici 2013: 185–86)11 We would also keep in mind that Foucault had a homosexual orientation in his personal life, though he asserted that sexual orientation is a social construct.

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the feminine body was not only punished or brutally assaulted, but also besmirched, denigrated and humiliated. However, this notion of humiliation is prevalent from primitive periods of civilisation.

Before the Emergence of Satan: Paradigms of Subjugation and Vindication in Pre-Christian Era

In Hebrew religious scriptures (ninth and eighth centuries BCE), we can detect that the notion of monolatry took a distinct shape in manipulating social and political matters. Yahweh, the only male and transcendent the God of Israelites, had to confine his followers from believing in or worshipping other local Canaanite deities such as El, Baal, Asherah, Anat, etc. However, when some of Israel’s kings and other aristocrats started to socially mingle and politically ally with the neighbour Canaanite states, the prophets began to reproach the ‘house of Israel’ as it is described in the scriptures. To drive them back towards the path of their one and true God, the scriptures censured them in a peculiar metaphorical narrative where Israel has been feminised as the bride of God.12 In the scriptures, Yahweh has been depicted as an almighty husband, who intends to punish his unfaithful wife Israel and, thus, threatens her in a harsh and unforgiving manner. In this narrative of accusation and threatening, we could find how patriarchy comprehends the essence of femininity and how it finds out a distinct punitive mechanism to discipline the ‘lecherous’ feminine. In those scriptural metaphors, Israel has been imagined as a ‘wife turned harlot, engaging in promiscuous sexuality’ who is wilfully ‘prostituting herself to foreign powers’ (Ruether 2005: 83). In Hosea’s narrative, the unlawful children of Israel would plead with their mother that, ‘She is not [God’s] wife and [God is] not her husband, that she put away whoring from her face and her adultery from between her breasts” (Ruether 2005: 83). Moreover, God tends to violate his beloved wife openly: would hand her over to public abusing and would let her be raped and assaulted by her unlawful lovers:

Behold, therefore I will gather all thy lovers, with whom thou hast taken pleasure, and all them that thou hast loved, with all them that thou hast hated; I will even gather them roundabout against thee,

12 ‘The prophets who developed this language casting Israel as God’s bride primarily used it to condemn and polemicize against the male elites for their alliances with the foreign powers around them- Egypt, Assyria, and smaller powers such as Tyre-ehich jeopardized the powers of Israel’ (Ruether 2005: 82).

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and will discover thy nakedness unto them, that they may see all thy nakedness… And I will also give thee into their hand, and they shall throw down thine eminent place, and shall break down thy high places: they shall strip thee also of thy clothes, and shall take thy fair jewels, and leave thee naked and bare. They shall also bring up a company against thee, and they shall stone thee with stones, and thrust thee through with their swords. (Old Testament, KJV, Ezekiel: 16: 37–40)

From these examples, we could find out that the state and religion holds an analogous and reciprocating structure of patriarchal authority and works parallelly to administer punitive dominance over the rebel and unlawful feminine. First of all, we find that, this reproach is targeted towards a selected portion of non-conformist radical Israelites; but, as the nature of the rebuke was full of wrath and vengeance, the prophets used metaphors of reproaching a wife, a woman accused of lechery, who could easily be subjected to patriarchal reproaches and disciplinary punitive measures. Second, we have to observe that the whole punishing process is supposed to be public and abusive. Initially, she would be subjected to public abuse, humiliation and rape, and then she would receive physical tortures, even death. As the intention of the scripture was to threaten the Israelis, advocating a sense of humiliation seemed an effective method. That is why, a feminine subject had been addressed to be abused and assaulted under public gazing, because it is the body (especially its private organs) which reflects the essence of femininity. Applying punitive and disciplinary mechanisms to a feminine body does not only reflect the notion of punishment or the idea of controlling the rebel ‘body’ but also endorses a notion of pulverising the whole identity of the subject. Destroying and slandering the body does not destroy a man completely, as masculinity of a subject is not rooted exclusively on physicality. Nevertheless, destroying and annihilating a feminine body completely destroys the feminine subject, as femininity is considered a physical attribute, or to be precise, physicality is the dominating component of feminine identity. Moreover, the feminine body has also to be under masculine subjugation and protection, where the man has rightful authority to savour it or hand it over to the public for humiliation and obliteration, as Yahweh has threatened to do with Israel. Considering these facts, we understand how Hebrew Bible had tried to depict the true nature of the voracious and destructive wrath of the male God, who could entirely destroy its defying subjects. This humiliation is also a historical reality in the case of undefined of transgendered bodies when juridico-normative power structure tries to socially ‘normalise’ them. We can also find examples of such abominations from early rabbinic period.

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Historically Locating the Subjugation of ‘Other’ Effeminate Bodies

Along with suggesting similar punishments for women found guilty of adultery, rabbinic legal discourse had dealt the matter of hermaphrodite or androgynous (a person having both male and female sexual characteristics) from an androcentric perspective as well. The Mishnah asserts that, ‘[T]he hermaphrodite may marry a woman but may not be married by a man’ (Fonrobert 2007: 281). This law indicates how the presence of male genital organs dominated the femininity of the hermaphrodite, and how the person had to conform to masculine heteronormativity to consort with someone. To corroborate this apparent masculinity, the hermaphrodite had to abide by a further law instructing that, ‘[H]e is prohibited from dressing and cutting hair according to women’s fashions’ (Fonrobert 2007: 281). Hence, we could see that when ‘body’ defines femininity, not only the organs but also the outer attributes of body ornamentation are considered within this construct of femininity. One could easily relate this implementation of juridico-religious power over anatomically undefined ‘other’ bodies with the incident of Herculine Barbin, whose journals were posthumously published with an introduction from Michael Foucault. Barbin was a hermaphrodite of the nineteenth century who was a woman by gender but possessed medically undetermined sexual organs. ‘S/he’ had to commit suicide after ‘s/he’ was legally obligated to present his/herself as a man in the society. According to ‘his/her’ medical reports, as Foucault published those along with the journal, Herculine ‘[was] a man, hermaphroditic, no doubt, but with an obvious predominance of masculine sexual characteristics’13 (McDougall 2010: 128). Barbin’s ‘incessant struggle against nature and reason’ actually reflects our proposition. Significantly, the reference of the rabbinic legal jurisdiction about the hermaphrodites also offers some insight into Butler’s critique of Foucault in her seminal work Gender Trouble. Butler, as she had critically explored Foucault’s introduction to the journal of Barbin,

13 We find ‘h/er’ detail physiological description in the reports of Dr Chesnet. The report also indicates that ‘s/he’ had to bear a great amount of physical pain during this medical examination. Within the details we find the doctor detecting that ‘her chest is that of a man, it is flat and without a trace of breasts’, ‘menstruation has never occurred’, ‘she has a vulva, labia majora and a feminine urethra, independent of a sort of imperforate penis, which might be a monstrously developed clitoris’. However, the doctor conclusively found that s/he did not possess a womb and used to have voluptuous sensations at night, thus deciding that Herculine is a man (McDougall 2010: 125–27).

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found an unresolved contradiction in references to Foucalt’s renowned theorisation of sexuality and power in History of Sexuality. She has observed that on the one hand the ‘official’ Foucault has always contended in his theories that sexuality is necessarily constituted within the ‘discursive and institutional’ matrixes of power, whereas on the other hand, in his introduction to Herculine’s journal (which was written just before the History of Sexuality), he finds out that ‘there does seem to be a “multiplicity of pleasures” in itself which is not the effect of any specific discourse/power exchange’ (Butler 1990: 97). Apparently, the ancient rabbinic legal discourse, which had constructed sexuality within a socio-normative power structure, supports the ‘official’ Foucault. This discursive institutional power structure clarifies that it is nearly impossible to historically substantiate the existence of ‘sexuality before the law’. However, one could observe that this primitive repression over uncategorised sexed bodies actually gives far more importance to body categorisation rather than the categorisation of sexuality. We could further deduce that the hierarchical structure of that body categorisation, working as the primary mode of the categorisation of sexuality, had tried to integrate every non-masculine ‘others’ under the same repressive and disciplinary social treatment. We could also deduce that the idea of ‘normalising’ undefined or transgressed bodies is to posit and define them within the stark frames of gender binary. Similarly, most minute masculine traits could compel the person to practise social masculinity. Inevitability of this conception could be established by various examples from pre-Christian periods to the nineteenth-century Europe.

Indian Tradition of Mind–Body Split: Problematising Mahābhārata

In the Indian perspective, the soul–body split had been contextualised quite differently in the philosophical schools from the end-Vedic era. In the Mahābhārata, we find the first political use of the soul–body split, which has been the basic philosophical proposition of the Bhagavad Gita.14 In the name of the soul–body split, Kŗşņa15 initiated the great

14 This is the principal scripture of Hinduism. It could be considered as the philosophical gist of the Mahābhārata.15 The chief political mentor of the Pāņḑavas, the protagonists in the Mahābhārata. Kŗşņa is considered as the reincarnation of lord Vişņu.

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battle of Kurukşetra.16 On the verge of the battle between the ‘Pāņḑavas’17 and the ‘Kauravas’,18 Arjuna, the mightiest protagonist of the Pāņḑavas, began to tremble in fear and dread as he saw his friends and relatives in the enemy ranks, waiting to be killed by the hands of their own friends and kin. Dejected as he thought about the consequence, Arjuna decided to withdraw himself from the infernal battle. At that time, Kŗşņa counselled Arjuna to ontologically establish that the persons whom Arjuna was going to kill in the battle were already dead. Only their bodies would demolish, but their souls are ever-perishing, indestructible and reincarnating in an eternal circle. The theory of the Gita, corresponding to Vedāntik (end-Vedic) philosophy of Sankara,19 reflects the classical Indian proposition that the ‘Brahman is the only truth, the world is unreal’ (Rosen 2007: 70). It was similar to platonic distinction between ideal and real, but Gita politicised this notion, as did Descartes.

It is important to observe that a disjuncture in the relationship with the nature and human existence is being established from the post-Vedic era, when Brahmanism slowly started to deploy its social agendas. Abanindranath Tagore, in his Bāñlār Brata (Tagore 1943[2011]), traced out an interesting shift in the relationship between nature and human existence by comparing various household folk rituals performed by women. ‘Brata’ is a genre of folk ceremony where the performers make a vow and/or perform rituals with chanting benedictions (mantras) to fulfil their wish. Abanindranath observed that the narrative of these folk chants is very much analogous to the pre-Vedic and Vedic chants. Both of which were eager to fulfil earthly needs—asking for more rain, more grain and more cattle; asking for blessings from Vedic gods of rain, sun and water; asking for health and long life; and asking for children. These chants reflected the sympathetic and harmonious relationship between

16 The mythical battleground where the 18 days’ battle between the Pāņḑavas and the Kauravas took place.17 Five protagonist brothers of the Mahābhārata, the sons of Pāņḑu. Draupadī was their wife.18 The 100 antagonist brothers led by Duryodhana. They were the sons of the blind king Dhŗtarāşţra. 19 The great exponent of Advaita-Vedanta and the author of Brahmasūtrabhāşya (Shankara or Shankaracharya, often referred as Adi Shankara, was a hindu philosopher and religious reformer of 8th century. He formed the philosophical school of ‘Advaita-Vedanta’, where Advaita literary means ‘non-dual’ and Vedanta literary means ‘end of the Vedas’. Adwaita-Vedanta is the end-Vedic doctrine proposing the singular and true exixtense of the absolute one, the ‘Brahman’, who does not have any quality or attribute. Shankara wrote commentaries to many Vedic ‘sutra’ or aphorisms, among which the most important one was the commentary or ‘Bhashya’ to ‘Brahma-sutra’. This commentary is called ‘Brahmasūtrabhāşya’).

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human beings and nature. On the other hand, post-Vedic chants of Brahminical narrative were always keen on transcending this worldly corporeal existence and finding deliverance in the absolute, as they uttered: ‘O earth Goddess, take our greetings. Let this be our last birth in this earth.’20 We can observe an opposite viewpoint in their narratives differentiating the world of creators with the created world, where people are inculcated to ignore this perishable world and follow the path of religion to secure a place in the world of the creators. The nature and natural world have been depreciated; human beings were suggested to insulate themselves from these worldly engagements, as those will befall them into the vicious circle of birth and rebirth as an embodied existence. Now, this reversal in the relationship between man and nature actually is very much analogous with the European disjuncture between nature and human existence as we are discussing it. We can find that the emergence of Brahminical patriarchy plays a crucial role in this shift.

It is needless to say that the similarity that we are trying to draw between these two concepts could not be historically located in an equivalent time frame. We may deduce that Indian epistemology had observed the split from a very early stage of development of the civilisation, which could rather be related to Platonic binary that we have discussed before. Nevertheless, the politicisation of this split is prominent in the post-Vedic epic Mahābhārata. We propose a brief sociopolitical understanding of the Mahābhārata from this perspective, where Irawati Karve’s reading of the Mahābhārata in ‘Yuganta’ (Karve 1991) could be particularly important.

The era of the Mahābhārata was a transitional period in the history of India. If we closely study the Mahābhārata, we could observe that it depicts a clash not only between royal brothers but between Brahmins and Kşatriyas or the representatives of political governance, namely the kings. The Pāņḑavas, always protected and guided by the Brahmins, formed a neo-Aryan civilisation by banishing the aboriginal tribes such as the Nāga21 and Rākşas22 from the land. For example, Karve explains that the Khāņḑava dahan (the burning of the Khandava forest along with its all inhabitants by Arjun and Kŗşņa) had a greater sociopolitical

20 Basumātā devī go, kari namaskār/ pŗthibīte janma jena nā hay āmār (Tagore 1943[2011]: 9).21 Nāga is one of many aboriginal tribal groups of India. The word Naga literally means ‘snake’, though we infer that their clan name bears their primitive totemic roots. 22 The word Rākşas literally means ‘demon’. However, it refers to non-Aryan indigenous groups of India. In Vedic literature, we often find that the Aryans are affronting the non-Aryans by calling them Rakshasa.

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explanation. The Naga tribes, who lived in the forest along with other aboriginal tribal groups, were nearly abolished in this brutal sabotage. Only Takşaka, the king of Nāga could escape this massacre with other six creatures. As Takşaka, was the representative of the ‘Naga’ clan in the narrative of Mahābhārata; we can infer that the other six creatures who were able to escape the sabotage were not mere creatures. We could conclude that six other clans have been metaphorised by mentioning about six creatures. This had become a family rivalry as we see that Parīkşit, the grandson of Arjuna, is later killed by Takşaka. Actually, the famous sage Vaiśampāyaņa narrated the whole story of the Mahābhārata to Janamejay, the son of Parīkşit while the latter was performing fire rituals to destroy Nāga, (literally meaning snake). We could further observe that it was not a simple family rivalry between the Pāņḑavas and Nāga, but it was an exemplar which elucidates the whole picture of how the neo-Aryan agrarian-monarchy developed in post-Vedic India. The Pāņḑavas were establishing a new civilisation, with a new capital at Indraprastha which was built by the Asura tribe (the chief architect of which was Maya), the local subjugated domiciles. The political mentor of the Pāņḑavas was Kŗşņa, who lived in a safe castle surrounded by sea (Dwarakā) and was protected and adorned by Brahmins as an incarnation of lord Vişņu. At the early youth of Pāņḑavas, they captured King Drupad to fulfil the revenge of their teacher Droņa, who was a poor Brahmin once insulted by Drupad—his childhood friend. Droņa also seized half the kingdom from him. In many incidents, the Mahābhārata depicts a picture of a conflict between Brahmanism and state power governed by the existing monarchy, and Pāņḑavas always stood by the Brahmins. However, the old monarchal system was abolishing and new sociopoilitical power structure was evolving at the post-Vedic age. The transformation from Vedic society to new Brahminical society was evident.

An example would expound the stratified structure of this new society. At the very first stage of the Mahabharata, when tension was budding between Duryodhana23 and Pāņḑavas, the Kuru24 elders proposed a test between Duryodhana and Yudhisthira.25 This test was designed to

23 Duryodhana was the eldest son of Dhŗtarāşţra, the elder brother of Pāņdu. Pāņdu was the legal father of Pāņḑavas and the King of Hastinapur, as his elder brother was blind by birth. Hence the conflict raged between their two successors – Yudhişţhira and Duryodhana. Duryodhana also had one hundred brothers and a sister. They are called Kauravas, as they belonged to Kuru clan.24 The family name of the Kings. 25 The eldest brother among Pāņḑavas.

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evaluate their abilities of delivering justice as a king. They summoned four men from four different social castes, a Brahmin, a Kshatriya, a Vaiśya and a Śudra,26 who had committed a crime together by killing a person. The elders asked both the brothers to issue a verdict with profound justifications. Duryodhan, as he got the first chance to speak in this trial, convicted four of them equally guilty and sentenced them to death. On the other hand, Yudhisthira demonstrated the subtleties of justice within a stratified social structure. As per him, the Śudra, who belonged to the lower class and, thus, had no right to education and knowledge was convicted less guilty among them as he was not supposed to have proper understanding of a crime or misconduct. Vaiśyas or the businessmen were allotted more opportunities to acquire knowledge, social norms and codes of conduct. Hence, he had committed this crime more knowingly than the Śudra, and thus faced more severe punishment. Kshatriya or the warrior, who protected the country and ruled it, knew everything about crime and justice. Hence, the punishment for the Kshatriya convict should have been far greater. Finally, the Brahmin, who possessed the knowledge of the Vedas, and from whom the other three classes should learn virtue, had committed a vile crime with full knowledge of it. Hence, he should have been penalised with death. Along with this trial, Yudhisthira proved his worth to the throne as his sense of delivering true justice was hailed among the court members.

This incident tells us about a society where the distribution of knowledge as well as responsibility towards the society was designed according to the class stratification. In a human society, more deep the juncture between justice and equality becomes, more it proves the starkness of social stratifications. In a truly egalitarian society, a singular sentence for a particular crime would have served justice. Thus, from the time of the Mahābhārata, we observe that the juridical ethics have been designed in accordance with social classifications, which purports to a complex structure of hierarchy. This sentence clearly holds that the Brahmins should be extremely penalised as it is their hierarchical responsibility to conduct virtue. Similarly, the Śudra had been taken as unaware of virtues as he possessed no social right of learning. This neo-classification reflects the post-Vedic structure of society, and Pāņḑavas subscribed to it hand by hand with Brahmins, who actually designed this

26 The classical work-based cast system prevalent in the post-Vedic era. The Brahmins belonged to the apex position of the hierarchy with all the resources of knowledge. Then the Kşatriyas, who were kings and warriors, protecting and ruling the land. Then there were Vaiśyas who were businessmen. Finally, the lowest cast was Śudras, who served the upper three castes.

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hierarchy and cared to validate this stratification by deploying it juridico-politically in the society. Duryodhana, on the other hand, as a descendant of old Kuru clan, demonstrated that his sense of judgement belonged to the previous age, when social equality was more prominent and obvious, and thus, reflected in juridical principles. However, this new society was more stratified and the power regime congruent to this society actually exploited the philosophy of the soul–body split expediently.

However, in opposition to the mind–body dualism and the neo-agrarian social modalities, we could locate a philosophical development which showed much more affinity towards worldly elements. It was the Lokāyata27 school of philosophy. It was also called Chārvāka philosophy by the name of its famous expounder Chārvāka. Chārvāka philosophy argued that the corporeal existence along with the physical attributes is the only thing that one could experience and observe as reality; hence, the corporeal or material requirements should be fulfilled or satisfied in every possible way. From the classical philosophical split between soul and body, which proposes an apex hierarchical position for the soul, Chārvāka philosophy has tried to restore the conceptions of body and corporeality from an inferior position. In the Mahābhārata, we could trace out the name of Chārvāka and could possibly locate him historically (though it is also believed that there were no single person named Chārvāka, it was just an ideology embraced by numerous people who were deprived by the Brahminical social hierarchy). His name has been mentioned as the friend of the main antagonist of the Mahābhārata, king Duryodhana, who fought against the Pāņḑavas. When Duryodhana was killed by Bhima (the third Pandava) by an unfair blow of the weapon, hollering with pain he mentioned that Chārvāka would have voiced against this unjust and cowardly action. Even Pāņḑavas’ wife Draupadī, as she was insulted publicly and banished from the kingdom with her husbands, favoured to follow Chārvāka philosophy in spite of accepting the mortification caused by going through the apparent ethical path of ‘righteousness’. Chārvāka was believed to be an expert of magic and occult sciences as well, representing the religio-cultural believes and traditions of the autochthonous subordinate or lower social class. However, after the battle was over, we find Chārvāka in the eve of the coronation of Yudhisthira, disguised as a Brahmin among thousands of other Brahmins who came to greet the new king. While the other Brahmins hailed the king and chanted benedictions upon the King, Chārvāka impeached the greatness of Yudhisthira by stating clearly that he killed his own kinsmen for the

27 Lokāyata literally means prevalent among the common people.

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throne.28 Dismayed by Chārvāka’s reprehension, Yudhisthira decided to give up his life in remorse. However, the Brahmins soon recognised Chārvāka as a disguised Rakshasa and burned him there (Mahābhārata: Santiparva: 39) to get the King rid of this ‘demon’.

Thus, we could propose an alternative understanding of the Mahābhārata, which depicts the social implements of the mind–body dualism in the Indian context. The main analogy to observe is how the social stratification and juridico-political deployment of power always not only works hand by hand with such philosophical concept, but also complements each other.

On Morality and Virtues: Attesting the Feminine Corporeality Through Religion

Another characteristic of feminine physicality is very much predominant in religious paradigms and domains of patriarchal socio-normativity: the virtue of ‘piety’, often intertwined with ‘chastity’. Both are the evaluating parameters of ethics and morality of women. We could observe that from the very beginning of the feminist movement, the feminist theoreticians have found the notion of ‘morality’ and ‘virtue’ working as a shackling patriarchal agenda. Carol Gilligan has appropriately observed that, ‘[T]he claim to rights on the part of women had from the beginning brought them into a seeming opposition with virtue’ (Gilligan 2003: 128). In the name of self-development, women were obligated to the path of self-sacrifice and patriarchal morality. Moreover, in religious aspects, the whole repertoire of ‘knowledge’ was under the possession of men. They usually decided to bestow knowledge upon women after examining proper exhibition of virtue and morality in social as well as domestic spheres. The case of Rabea is an apt example of this. To begin our discussion over this notion, we would like to bring together two different sayings from the writings of two different practitioners of two different religions, which strangely bear a similar pattern. In his commentary On the Song of Songs, regarding the question of judging a transgressed fellow saint, St Bernard of Clairvaux recalled a biblical saying from scripture: ‘Better is the wickedness of a man than a woman doing good’

28 In Kisari Mohan Ganguli’s translation: Fie on thee! Thou art a wicked king. Thou art a slayer of kinsmen. What shalt thou gain, O son of Kunti, by having thus exterminated thy race? Having slain also thy superiors and preceptor, it is proper for thee to cast away thy life. Retrieved from http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/m12/m12a038.htm (last accessed on 26 July 2015).

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(Bernard, On the Song of Songs, Sermon 12.9). Interestingly, Ibn Ādam Sanā’ī, a Persian mystical poet of the late eleventh century, stated in his writings that, ‘A pious woman is better than a thousand bad men’ (Schimmel 1975: 426). These two propositions might either seem contradictory or could be understood as the examples showing how concerned religions contemplate femininity. However, a careful study of these two sayings unveils that these two actually replicate each other. St Bernard, through the uttering of this scriptural aphorism, made his fellow saints and disciples aware so that they dare not allow a woman to do anything ‘good,’ as her virtues were intolerable to religious patriarchy, which was always much interested in condemning women. Most of these condemnations were used to target her sexuality or physicality. It was argued that women possessed facinorous affinity towards corporal desires and subtly administered such vile desires in the hearts of men through love or lust. Thus, they either had to constantly restrain themselves or had to be restricted by society in an unyielding manner, because they were epitomized as the bearer of perilous concupiscence. Hence, it was only ‘piety’ that could be considered as the positive virtue of a woman, and therefore, not a ‘good’ woman, but a ‘pious’ woman was considered better than a thousand bad man. One cannot fail to observe the sense of dread which is imbued in the saying of St Bernard. A religious man seems always concerned about keeping a safe distance from the feminine, as she could invoke the darkest desires suppressed deep in his heart. Her virtues, her nobleness might attract men towards her, and that attraction might culminate in carnal consequences. Therefore, the guardian patriarchy does not take any chance, criticises every good deeds of a woman, dejects every virtue practised by her and imposes the ‘virtue’ of piety, which is the only virtue that would purposefully keep women at a safe distance from men! We find Gilligan apt when she observes that, ‘[M]orality, though seem as arising from the interplay between self and others, is reduced to an opposition between self and other’ (Gilligan 2003: 139).

This notion of virtues and piety actually defines how the definition of femininity has supposedly been restrained within the physical existence and masculinity possesses scopes of exceeding the limits of corporeality by its other virtues. In the Mahābhārata, we find that Draupadī, the queen of Pāņḑavas, is given a strange explanation by lord Kŗşņa, clarifying the cause of her ordeal of being the wife of five husbands. Kŗşņa explained that in her past life, Draupadī prayed that her future husband might possess five different virtues. In her present birth, God fulfilled her prayer and bestowed upon her those five virtues embodied

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in five different persons. Hence, Draupadī actually got her man of desire integrated in these five different persons; as manliness depends upon the virtues, it does not restrict itself to the mere count of physical bodies! However, the only virtue that Draupadī herself possessed was piety, for which her prayer of past life was fulfilled as a reward. Similarly, the utmost voracious attack upon her occurred at the moment when the antagonist kings publicly assaulted, abused and humiliated her in the court, which we could easily relate with our previous instances from Hebrew Bible. So, the patriarchal definition of femininity and its nature of treatment with a feminine body are very much unified and analogous in most of the religious and sociopolitical scenarios.

On the other hand, in case of men, we find a subtle analogy of the idea of ‘purity’ (as the notion of ‘chastity’ never implies to men) or with celibacy. In the Mahābhārata, Bhīşma, who was considered as the most noble among men, was celibate for his whole life, and for this strict vow he was awarded with the boon of death by wish. On the other hand, celibacy does not confirm chastity for women, which is a higher moral. For chastity, one has to offer her body to ‘legitimised fornication’ (not only coupling with husband, or loving him, but coupling and loving others as she is ordered to) as social patriarchy orders and decides for her. Hence, we find the name of Draupadī among the five chaste women of all times though she has five husbands. We should also keep in mind that in way to heaven, she could not make it alive to the end. She was the first to fall because of the vice of loving Arjuna more dearly among her five husbands! Therefore, we could say that conforming to virtues is integrated in the idea of conforming to physicality for women.

Conclusion, or Returning to the Primary Question

Returning back to our previous discussion, we could observe that attaining and maintaining this state of piety has also been considered as the most notable religious pragmatic. Hence, the body of the feminine must be defended from the desirous gaze of men, and would seek only spiritual or metaphysical love and longing to God or husband. A well-circulated story of the famous Sufi saint Fatimā of Nishapur might prove our hypotheses true. Fatimā used to discuss mystical subjects freely with Bāyezid Bistamī, another famous Sufi of the tenth-century Persia. ‘During the discussion she would left her veil without restriction, until the day came that the great saint remarked that her hands were stained with henna’ (Schimmel 1975: 427), that is, he admired her beauty by

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gazing at her hands. At that very moment, Fatimā terminated their relationship and stated to Bistami that, ‘Oh Bayazid as long as you did not see my hand and henna, I was at ease with you, but now that your eye has fallen on me, our companionship is unlawful’ (Shaikh 2013: 50). Hence, we could see that the ‘purity’ of their relationship actually depended upon restricting the carnal, by completely submerging in the spiritual. A single praise of the henna stained hands of a ‘pious’ woman from even a religious man could asperse her, reduce her spiritual state, which could culminate in reduction of her social position. We have to keep in mind that Fatimā was married; hence, the question of ‘chastity’ was simultaneously vital in her case. To rescue her ‘piety’ and ‘chastity’ from a slightest male admiration was so important to her that she sacrificed the scope of mystical learning from a famous saint like Bāyezid at an instance. Gaining the knowledge of spiritual path and attaining a high mystical state was less important to a woman saint than to protect her corporeal piety from the slightest male observance, which instead could bring her success in the path of the religious practice.

We also find Bāyezid’s remarks on Fatimā as he admires her glorious spiritual state: ‘If any man desires to see a true man hidden in woman’s clothes, let him look at Fatimā’ (Shaikh 2013: 51). Hereby, we understand that complete denouncing of the bodily existence or physicality may transcend a woman to a state attainable by men only; hence, she achieves a spiritual rebirth which is devoid of her physical form and gains the honour of being counted among the ‘rank of men’. This instance reciprocates with the initial instance of Rabea in an analogous manner, by completing the circle of theoretical explorations intending to critically apprehend the true essence of femininity in various socio-religious narratives. Therefore, we could culminate by asserting that femininity, according to patriarchal religio-social understandings, is a physical construct that could be fabricated by several hetero-normative, socio-cultural as well as political paraphernalia, and could be transcended by denouncing the corporeal essences of human existence, by declaring interminable ‘battles against the body’.

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battles against the body: reconstructing femininity in patriarchal religio- social spaces

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